The specification relates to advertising.
Online advertising is a widespread feature of many web pages. Advertisers prefer to place advertisements (“ads”) on web pages which have content that is relevant to the ads. For example, ads for auto parts might be pertinent to web pages featuring auto repair techniques. Therefore, auto parts advertisers might prefer to place ads on web pages featuring auto repair techniques.
Online advertising can be a desirable feature of hosting services that provide for the sharing of audiovisual content, such as images, videos, or electronic games. As the main content of these hosting services is audiovisual, providing effective online advertising amounts to determining which ads are relevant to the audiovisual content, which in turn relies on determining the nature of the audiovisual content.
Typical approaches to determining the nature of audiovisual content include community “tagging,” or allowing users in a broad community to associate textual key phrases (“tags”) with audiovisual content as a whole. For example, an image of a Wankel rotary engine could be tagged, “Wankel rotary engine,” “Wankel,” and “engine.” Similarly, an image of a basketball game could be tagged with the names of the teams playing or the names of all the players depicted in the image. However, community tagging of audiovisual content can be incomplete and inaccurate. Some content may not be tagged at all, while other content may be tagged with impertinent commentary, such as “cool” or “wow.” The lack of tags or the presence of impertinent or irrelevant tags may make the determination of relevant ads difficult.